My Blood on Your Lips, Your Money in My Bra

I never knew it would be so hard to sleep with someone watching me. It didn't help that this someone was Eli, whose presence was all the more obvious because of his over-active aura. He'd been standing by the doorway since I'd first laid down, his eyes never leaving my still form. It had been an hour now, and I was no longer making any attempt to sleep. My eyes were open, focused on the dark curtains that hid the balcony from view.

"Eli, you can stop," I finally said, my voice betraying none of the annoyance I felt. "It was a one time thing. I won't be trying to kill myself again any time soon."

"How can I believe that? I never expected you to try the first time. I can't simply take your word for it and leave. You're clearly unstable."

I sat up and turned to the vampire, my eyes narrowed in anger. "Have I ever been 'stable,' Eli? Have I ever seemed like a normal, happy person with only normal, human worries?" I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, now fully facing Eli with anger still written all over my face. "Honestly, you should've seen all of this coming. Everyone should have." At that, he merely dropped his gaze. I was right, and he had no way of arguing against that fact. "Look, Eli. I'm sorry that I did what I did. I'm sorry that it has effected you so deeply. But you need to accept that stalking me and constantly trying to keep my from trying anything else will only drive me to repeat my mistake faster. You're going to annoy me to death if you don't leave me alone." He gave me a weird look, almost as if he thought it was funny, but at the same time both confusing and troubling. "Just go, Eli. I need to sleep."

"Fine," he said softly. "I'll be in the living room if you need anything." He then turned and walked out into the hall, quietly closing the door behind himself.

I sighed and laid back down, sprawling on the covers to stare up at the ceiling. I couldn't help but wonder why suicide had never crossed my mind before. Weren't messed up people like myself supposed to think of that earlier on in their torturous lives?

Whatever, I thought, sighing a second time. If I would've thought of it sooner, I would've been dead when I was twelve.

I rolled onto my side, my back to the closed door and my eyes on the curtains once more. No light passed through them, and found myself filled with an odd yearning for the brightness of the sun. It was a strange sensation, as I tended to wish more often for the darkness. After all, my need for the dark was why my windows were so heavily covered to begin with.

Quietly, I slid out of bed and made my way to the covered doors, pushing the curtains aside to let a bit of light into the room. I took a step back and squinted against the sun's sudden assault on my photosensitive eyes. But soon, I adjusted to the brightness and pulled the curtains completely out of the way, allowing me access to the door. I opened it, stepping cautiously out onto the balcony with bare feet.

There was a light breeze here to accompany the sun's soothing light. It shifted the loose fabric of my blood-red skirt, lifting it and dropping it again in a slow, peaceful rhythm. I took the last few steps to the balcony's edge and leaned against the railing, peering down at the street below as I had so many times before. Yet jumping had never crossed my mind, just as drowning myself had been a new concept barely an hour ago.

Why now? I couldn't help but wonder again as I watched a group of cars rush by below. Why not sooner? I had a feeling that such questions would continue to bother me until I finally met my end, an answer nowhere in sight.

Slowly, I sank to my knees beside the railing, loosely gripping the black bars and looking through them at a pair of twenty-somethings on the sidewalk below. They were holding hands, smiling, appearing to be a normal, happy couple. They were talking about something, the woman simply glowing as she spoke. She touched her stomach lightly, and her male companion smiled even more. She was pregnant, it seemed.

Would I like children? I asked myself, my head tilting in thought as I watched the couple vanish around a corner. The thought, much like the concept of suicide, had never even crossed my mind before. But now that I knew my end was drawing near... No, I decided quickly enough. Children and I wouldn't get along well. They're loud and I'm crazy.

A simple enough conclusion.

After watching traffic pass by for another minute or two, I stood. The sun was starting to irritate my eyes, and I longed once more for darkness. I went back into my bedroom, closed the door and the curtains, then went to my bed. Sleep overtook me in mere moments.

-

"Elyria, get up!" I was being shaken by the shoulder rather violently, a voice harshly whispering by my ear. "Up, Elyria! Up!"

I opened my eyes and glared at the idiot who'd been shaking me: Kyrianna. Terror was in her glowing eyes, but it had nothing to do with my anger. It was something far worse.

"What is it?" I asked as I sat up, getting to my feet once she'd stepped away from the bed.

"The werewolf has come for you," she answered, her words a hurried jumble. "They need your help. Now."

"What?" Without waiting for an answer, I rushed out the door.

Eli and Hale were facing each other in the doorway, both appearing more mean and intimidating than usual. Apparently, they weren't particularly fond of one another...

When Hale noticed me, his fierce expression transformed into one of alarm. His shirt was torn in a few places, stained red near the shoulder, and he had a nasty-looking cut on his cheek. Clearly, he'd just come from a battle. "Elyria, we need you. Are you able to help us now?"

"What time is it?" was my response. I'd fallen asleep when the sun was still up, much earlier in the day, so...why would the werewolves need my help? The vampires couldn't attack in the daylight...

He looked shocked and confused by the question, though he answered nonetheless. "Nearly nine."

I hadn't expected that. I'd been asleep for quite a while...

"All right. Let's go."

The werewolf nodded, eagerly leading me out the door. Eli and Kyrianna immediately began to trail along behind us. I wanted to tell them to stay behind, but I'd learned by now that they were both too stubborn to listen to me. Keeping my mouth shut would do more good than trying to argue with them.

We reached Hale's car and piled inside, the werewolf starting off before I even had my door closed. Things seemed to be worse than I'd thought...

-

The car jerked to a halt in front of a large house I'd passed several times, but never paid much attention to. It was a simple white two-story, its only distinguishing features its massive size and black shutters. It was much smaller than Terrence's house, much more ordinary, yet it still felt like the house of someone powerful and important. It comforted me for some strange reason.

Hale turned off the car and exited without taking the key. The car clearly wasn't high on his list of priorities at the moment, and it was easy to see why. The front door of the house was hanging open, gunshots and shouts echoing out to us. In the dim light of a lamp on the floor near the doorway, I thought I saw a woman's corpse, eerily unmoving amidst the chaos I was sure was taking place inside.

"Come on," Hale said hurriedly as he started for the house, nearly sprinting. I and my companions rushed out of the vehicle and followed, all anxious to see what was happening. As I ran, I noted the many cars parked haphazardly on the lawn, most of them cars I'd seen many times at Terrence's house. I shuddered, fearing the scene we could find within.

We leapt over the woman in the doorway, Hale stopping for just long enough to see if she was breathing. She was, surprisingly, though the gash cutting through her abdomen didn't look too promising. Hale went on his way, however. We didn't have time to help the injured.

Hale rounded a corner and immediately started up a flight of stairs, stepping around a pair of ashen vampire corpses as if they weren't even there. He then proceeded to lead us down a dark hallway, the overhead lights all shattered, to what I assumed was the site of the fiercest battle in the house. In the space of a fairly large study, a trio of werewolves was facing a group of six vampires. Both parties seemed to have taken a beating, the living blood-covered and wounded and the dead scattered about the room. The large desk in the corner had been knocked on its side, a bookcase leaning over it with its contents strewn across the floor. It pained me to see so many books just laying there, some of them even sporting blood-stained covers and viciously torn pages.

My attention was torn away from the mess of books when Hale lunged at one of the vampires. The woman had been going for a Were with his back turned, and Hale had apparently wanted to put a stop to that. He caught her by the throat and tossed her through the nearby window like she was no more than a small rodent. The glass shattered, and she grabbed at the window sill. The glass still sticking up there cut her, however, and she couldn't get a grip of it. She fell from sight a moment later, dead silent.

I turned my attention back the battle before me and decided that I should help instead of just standing there dumbly. Eli and Kyrianna had already disappeared, more than likely having found their own opponents somewhere else in the house. There wasn't enough to go around here.

As a werewolf fell on one of the remaining vampires, pinning him down and tearing at his throat with the fangs of a wolf, another vampire decided to sneak up behind him. Just as Hale had done before, I decided to step in. Before the vampire could reach the distracted werewolf, I jumped into his path, my eyes blazing with a necromancer's light. Clearly, this one had never dealt with my kind before, as it was all too easy to overtake him. He didn't even seem to know how to struggle, his consciousness merely sitting their, dumbfounded, as I directed his body away from the werewolf and me.

I flung the young male at a vampire who had just been knocked back by a Were. At my command, he sank his fangs into his comrade's throat, causing the male to cry out in surprise. The werewolf then attacked, tearing both of the vampires apart with his wolf's claws. Thus, my hold on the vampire weakened and broke off, leaving me free to find other prey.

I jumped at the sound of a gunshot. I felt foolish for doing so, but it wasn't my fault. Besides the fact that it had come from directly behind, I also wasn't used to the noise in any way. Screams, growls, hisses, the clash of metal on metal -- I was used to all of that. But guns? I'd been exposed to them only once or twice during the course of my dangerous little life.

When I turned to find out what had happened, my jaw nearly dropped in shock. Another vampire, this one female, was standing only feet away from the disfigured corpse of a werewolf, her eyes wide and her hand shaking, the pistol in her grasp soon slipping from her fingers. The man's brains were quite literally covering the white wall behind him, his vacant eyes staring right at the woman. Blood matted his eyelashes, dripping from the gaping hole in his forehead. The woman was bloody as well, crimson spattered across her face and clothes. The carnage was only so bad because she had shot him from point blank range, a foolish but undoubtedly necessary move on her part. The werewolf's body slid slowly down the wall to land in a slumped heap on the bloody floor.

In an instant, Hale had a hold of the woman. She didn't even try to fight him as he twisted her neck, jerking her head away from her body in a way that was common to Eli. The woman fell to the floor, ashen just as all dead vampires were.

Quickly, I surveyed the room, finding that Hale and the other werewolf were still standing. All of the vampires had been killed, and only one of them with any help from me. Why had I even been asked to help? I wasn't needed.

Another gunshot rang out from down the hall, and the werwolves rushed out of the room without a glance my way. I followed silently at a much slower pace, figuring they wouldn't need my assistance in the next battle any more than they'd needed it here.

The sounds of battle were coming from farther down the hallway, though I never got the chance to see what was happening. I suddenly found myself tumbling down the stairs, landing heavily at the bottom. I saw a pair of male vampires heading toward me with the quickness of their kind, horrible smiles on their pale lips. I leapt to my feet and prepared to fight, the glow of my eyes already increasing in brightness.

Much to my surprise, both of the vampires averted their eyes. They weren't stupid. Which was really bad for me, seeing as I didn't exactly have much experience in the art of hand-to-hand combat.

With my eyes still glowing, I began doing what I could to defend myself. I dodged a few quick punches, crouching down to deliver a kick to one of the vampires' shins. It was hard enough to knock him back a step, though the other one was still perfectly capable of landing a blow to my stomach. I hit the wall, grunting in pain.

The vampire I'd kicked lunged at me, aiming a punch at my face. I dodged it, his fist hitting the wall instead of my flesh. Quickly, while I had the chance, I moved my face into his line of sight and locked my eyes with his. He began to fight me immediately, but I had control of him. I turned him on his companion instantly and sent him toward the man, watching as they began to exchange blows. After a moment, I resorted to my usual means of attack and had my victim rip his opponent's throat out with his fangs. The vampire fell to the floor soon enough, ashen and dead.

Walking alongside my puppet, I headed down another hallway, soon emerging in the kitchen. Battle was raging on in here as it was everywhere else, one werewolf taking on five vampires, all female. A few dead bloodsuckers were slumped over counters and sprawled lifelessly on the tile floor, but the victory wasn't too sweet. There were a couple of werewolves among the dead as well.

Another gunshot echoed through the kitchen, and the werewolf fell back, clutching his arm and snarling. He recovered in an instant, however, attacking the female with the gun as though she'd never hit him. He jerked the weapon from her grasp and tossed it aside, taking her to the floor a moment later. He tore her jaw from her face, then left her to writhe on the floor, shrieking in agony.

The remaining vampires were beginning to go for him, but I slid into the space between the two parties with my possessed male still at my side. As he started to brawl with a couple of the women, I let the glow of my eyes increase once more, taking control of another vampire with relative ease. She turned on her companions quickly, beginning a fight of her own.

"What are you doing?" I recognized the husky, animalistic voice immediately. It was the werewolf that had been with Hale during our first meeting, the one for whom I was intended to be a blood slave. I turned to him, finding a rather interesting sight.

The male was tall, about Eli's height, with a muscular but not bulky build. His skin was pale, much like the skin of my human form, and he had the amber eyes of a wolf. His hair, too, seemed to reflect that of a wolf. It was a bit on the long side, shaggy and white at the edges with gray near the roots. Even the hair on his bare arms was white and gray, nearly blending into his snow-colored skin. Even stranger were his teeth. They looked like they belonged directly in a wolf's mouth, the canines a pair of long fangs that barely fit in his mouth. I was surprised that his nails weren't just like a wolf's claws and that he was walking like a normal human.

"Killing vampires," I answered after a brief pause, looking into his fierce amber eyes. "That's what Hale brought me here to do."

"I was killing these ones," he growled, taking a step toward me, as if he were trying to intimidate me. He was a bit scary, even to me, but I didn't back down.

I glanced behind me, finding that the two vampires under my control had slaughtered all but one of the other vampires. "Well, there's still one left," I said calmly, turning my gaze back to the werewolf. "You can have it, if you want."

"No," he said, taking a step back, his eyes a little less threatening now. "There are plenty more elsewhere." And with that, he strode out of the kitchen, off to find himself something else to kill.

I watched him go, then looked at the vampires. The female I had under my control finally struck down the last vampire, the two still on their feet turning toward me at my silent command. I led them out of the room after a moment, deciding to try to make myself useful once more.

Just down the hall, I found my chance. In the living room, probably the most spacious and extravagent room in the entire house, I discovered what had to be the fiercest battle yet. Five werewolves were up against twelve vampires, Kyrianna in the midst of it all. She had one vampire under her control, right at her side to defend her, but other than that, she seemed to be acting primarily as a distraction. A couple of vampires lunged for her, trying to strike her. She quickly dodged their attacks, her puppet soon taking out one of the vampires while a werewolf went for the other. Another of the blood-sucking creatures tried to attack her from behind, but a werewolf quickly did the same to him.

I rushed into the fray without giving it much thought, not liking that Kyrianna was proving to be more useful than I. I sent my puppets toward a small cluster of vampires that had decided to gang up on a younger werewolf. The girl was holding her own, but she was getting a bit too beat up in the process.

I caught the group by surprise, managing to finish one of them off before any of them even noticed. They soon turned on my vampires, however, slaughtering one of them while the other continued to fight, seriously injuring one of her opponents. The werewolf attacked the distracted vampires, tearing one of them to pieces while the final one defeated mine. I was now virtually unarmed, and I had a feeling I'd be that way for a while. None of these vampires looked like they'd be paying attention to me any time soon.

"Thanks," the female Were said, offering me a small smile as the final vampire went elsewhere. Her lips were a bit bloody, crimson in a few spots instead of pale pink, but somehow, that just added to the thankful expression. "I don't think I would've lasted much longer on my own." She tugged a black hair tie from her wrist and began to pull her hair back. It was an odd shade of brown, sort of a muddy color with hints of red mixed in, and it reached just below her shoulders, perfectly capable of getting in her way during a fight.

"You're welcome," was all I could think to say to her. She smiled again, then hurried off to find another vamp to fight.

Once she was gone, I looked around the dark room, quickly deciding that I wasn't needed here. The remaining Weres appeared to be fine on their own, especially with Kyrianna around as back-up. I left, now heading back up the stairs.

I went toward the room from which the most noise could be heard, this one a bedroom, probably the master bedroom. It was pretty big for a bedroom, so there was plenty of space in which to fight. Yet there wasn't as much going on here as I'd expected. There was only one werewolf, one I'd never seen before, and four vampires. But the werewolf wasn't in good shape, and I could tell from my spot in the doorway that he was just barely managing to fight them off.

I waited silently, watching for an opening in the fight. It came when the Were shoved a vampire back, knocking it and another male to the floor. The remaining two started for the werewolf, but I stepped in front of them. My eyes met one vampire's, then the other's, the glow taking them in instantly. They were easily taken under my control, only one of them putting up even a small fight. They turned on their companions as the two vampires stood, both looking confusedly at the possessed males.

"Mike?" one of them asked. "What are you-" But his friend cut him off, tackling him to the floor and beginning to bite him. The final two vampires went for each other, a battle breaking out between them.

I turned to the werewolf. Our eyes met for a moment, then he fell to the floor, unconscious. Not knowing what else to do, I left him there and turned my attention back to the vampires.

I found only one left, this one not under my control. He lunged at me before I could try to possess him, knocking my back into a dresser and biting into my neck. I cried out, instinctively bringing my knee up to his groin. It was a bitch move, I knew, but it worked. He stumbled back, giving me time to ram my fist into his nose. It didn't kill him, of course, but it did knock him out. I then left the room, figuring the unconscious werewolf would be fine. Either he would wake up first or the vampire wouldn't even notice him.

I paused at the top of the stairs, hearing several sets of footsteps below. There was soon a massive group of vampires heading up the stairs toward me, all fresh and ready for battle. Apparently, James had decided that it was necessary to send in another wave of minions. From what I could tell, there weren't many of us left to fight, and from what I was seeing now, I decided that we wouldn't be making it out of here tonight.

I took a step back. The vampires who were approaching me did so slowly, cruel smiles on their pasty faces, flashing fangs that would soon be the death of me. Fear made me incapable of trying to control them, even though several of them were looking directly into my eyes.

I took another step back and listened for a moment. Downstairs, I could here battle still raging on, but up here, there was only silence. I was alone with an unconscious vampire and a half-dead werewolf. I was screwed.

When the vampires were a couple of steps from the top, I turned and ran. I wasn't trying to run from them, however, though their laughter told me that they thought otherwise. I was simply trying to lead them to somewhere less cramped, somewhere that could give me a better chance of survival. That place, I decided, would be the study I'd first fought in.

Here, I felt a fairly strong breeze sneaking in through the broken window, turning the pages of the books on the floor. Thus, the rustling sounds of paper accompanied the sounds of many footsteps as I turned, putting my back to the window and facing the door. Vampires soon filed in through the doorway, all of them still wearing those cocky, annoyingly evil smirks. They spread across the room to face me, and I counted sixteen of them.

If I won this fight, it was either because they really, really, really couldn't fight or because I had a freaking guardian angel.

I took a deep breath. They charged.

The pain I feared was soon to come. And I had no choice but to stand there and take it.